West Texas Drawl

I find myself missing her,  

The first wife...  

Smoky West Texas drawl and beautiful brown eyes...  

I chance upon old photos from an old hard drive...  

There she is   

Looking back at me from the backlit LCD...  

In the beginning,  

She had a warmth about her...  

Emotionally...  

Physically...  

Intellectually...  

A chill eventually set in...  

I find myself missing her,  

The woman I first met...  

Kneeling down on the carpet to first kiss her as she was sitting on the couch...  

Her lips so soft and warm and wet...  

Placing my hands on her hips that felt like Heaven distilled into flesh...  

The moment was supposed to last,  

But moments rarely do...  

Some say time is a substance like water...  

Perception flows in its current,  

But past, present, and future all exist in a timeless now...  

I find myself missing that moment...  

15 years we spent together struggling against the stress of survival...  

She fell out of love with me, eventually...  

That chill slowly settled in...  

I grew to miss her touch even when she was sitting right next to me...  

The days of cupping her breast as we spooned to sleep long past...  

One of the pictures a side view of her naked breast, up close,  

A self portrait taken when the warmth was something she felt for me...  

When she could be playful and seductive...  

I remember the taste on my lips...  

The feel of her erectile tissue reacting to oral stimulation...  

She was so perfect sometimes, to me...  

I guess I never really was, for her...  

I was physically frail when she loved me...  

Then I became reborn after a short bout with near death...  

Good as new...  

Physically...  

But not in time to retain her love...  

Not in time to ever feel her warmth again...  

In the holograms film is every moment we shared...  

That first kiss has to be in there somewhere...  

I find myself wishing I could relive it...  

Mere memory doesn't do it justice...  

They simply enhance the absence...  

Digital pictures are just lines of code...  

Cold evidence of distance traveled...  

Even if they sometimes hint at some kind of consciousness behind,   

It's simply artifice and illusion...  

Her breath in my ear as my lips kissed her neck is a million miles away...  

She is just another stranger now...  

Just another encapsulated story in the anthology...  

I think about the timeless now with a longing...  

I find myself missing her sometimes...  

No one that came after feels like this...  

No one that came after lasted more than a moment...  

I understand that there is no going back...  

I hold no hope of reconciliation...  

But she still holds pieces of my attention  

Tangled in her hair...